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The ext3 or third extended filesystem is a journaled file system that is commonly used by the Linux kernel. It is the default file system for many popular Linux distributions.
The ext4 or fourth extended filesystem is a journaling file system for Linux, developed as the successor to ext3.

It was born as a series of backward compatible extensions to remove 64-bit storage limits and add other performance improvements to ext3.However, other Linux kernel developers opposed accepting extensions to ext3 for stability reasons and proposed to fork the source code of ext3, rename it as ext4, and do all the development there, without affecting the current ext3 users

Ext2Read is an explorer like utility to explore ext2/ext3/ext4 files. It now supports LVM2 and EXT4 extents. It can be used to view and copy files and folders. It can recursively copy entire folders. It can also be used to view and copy disk and file

Ext2Fsd is an ext2 file system driver for Windows 2000, XP, Vista. It’s a free software and everyone can distribute and modify it under GPL2.

Procedure o follow

Important Note:- When creating/formatting the ext4 filesystem, make sure to add “-O ^extent” which means disabling the “extent” feature bit. The following steps will not work if your ext4 filesystem still has “extent” feature enabled. ext2 and ext3 partitions should be fine.

ext2fsd is basically for ext2/ext3. The ‘extent’ feature is enabled for ext4 in most cases. That’s why using ext2fsd is simply not suggested for ext4 partitions. Your file system can easily be screwed!

“Important Note:- Use these tools with your own risk if you don’t use them properly it will remove your linux partition data”

Hmmm… I avoided it altogether. Had WD 1.5TB HDD with 750GB NTFS and 750GB EXT3 partition on it. Asked Ubuntu to copy about 10GB of files from EXT3 partition to NTFS and result is partition vanishes mid-copy leaving drive undetectable by anything, including WD’s own diagnostic tools. Tried Seagate which can make the drive attempt reads, but it errors on every read all they way through the drive. Windows cannot write to it, repartition it or anything. It says it is 0GB in size. Linux say it is FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF GB in size. Worst and strangest drive failure I have ever seen.

@Hmmmm, if I understood you correctly, you’re saying that ubuntu messed up your disk while copying data between two of its partitions. This has nothing to do with the tools that this blog article describes.

I partitioned my approximate 1TB Hdd with GParted. I created a 98 GB NTFS partition, a 276Gb NTFS partition and the remainder(approx 556 Gb) is an Extended Partition. 2 Logical partitions are within the extended partition of 60 Gb and 62 Gb and 433.82 Gb unallocated space. Win 7 Microsoft management console does NOT show an Extended Partition. The WIN7 MMC shows 4 PRIMARY partitions with the last 2 partitions of 60 Gb and 62 Gb and 433.82 Gb unallocated space. Why cant I see Extended partitions & why are logical partitions shown as 2 Primary in Windows 7.

Only if you are. 🙂 IFS is older and last I checked didn’t support new stuff with ext4 as you’d want it to; it also isn’t, IIRC, open source. Fsd is newer, open source, and as a result does support ext4 now, and should continue to improve over time.

Ext2IFS doesn’t work at all for ext4 partitions, it’s strictly ext2/3, and they’ve no plans to introduce ext4 support. I think it’s pretty much a dead project anyway, there’s not been any updates to it in well over a year. not even the website has seen any updates